From Elite to Rollercoaster Tycoon: 20 years of sim games, part 2

In part two of our epic history of video game sims, we abandon virtual …

In part one of our epic history of video game sims, we dug deep into the social, political, and personal. But sims have always excelled at something else: putting people behind the controls of multimillion-dollar pieces of hardware.

Learning to fly

Flight simulators existed in various forms before the advent of the microcomputer, but never really for an enthusiast market—at least, not in any sophisticated form—until Bruce Artwick's creation of Flight Simulator in late 1979.

Given personal computing at the time, the first installment of Flight Simulator was necessarily simple, with tiled wireframe graphics, a chugging frame rate, and a rudimentary heads-up display that covered half the screen. But it evolved considerably in the following years, especially after Microsoft licensed the property from Artwick's company, subLOGIC, in 1982.

The game progressively gained graphical fidelity, more accurate simulation, and greater depth—including additional game modes and aircraft (of all shapes and sizes), as well as user-generated content (which emerged initially through hacks, then became officially supported in the 1989 release Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0).

The legendary Flight Simulator. This shot comes from the Apple II version.

World War II veteran and former test pilot Chuck Yeager served as technical consultant on the popular Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer (1989), which simulated 14 planes with flying accompanied by snippets of commentary from Yeager himself—sometimes helpful, sometimes motivational, often entertaining.

SubLOGIC released its first post-Flight Simulator sim, Flight Assignment: A.T.P., in 1990, staking claim to the title of first company to simulate civilian airline operations—including a rudimentary implementation of Air Traffic Control.

SubLOGIC's A.T.P.

Other notable non-combat flight sims include Flight Unlimited (1995), which featured ahead-of-its-time ground textures and was the first sim to offer fluid dynamics rather than direct control of airplane movements, and X-Plane, which is less a game than a complete flight sim environment—offering full customization of maps, scenery, aircraft, user interface, and more.

By the turn of the century, Flight Simulator held enough complexity and detail that novice pilots could use it for training purposes. The 2002 edition even featured artificial intelligence aircraft, which complicated flight paths and communication with airports, and introduced a 3D virtual cockpit—further shrinking the gap between the experience of piloting a virtual plane and piloting a real one.

Flight Simulator 2002

Highway to the danger zone

While Flight Simulator and ATP (then later, X-Plane) established themselves as the go-to sims for enthusiasts of civilian aircraft, others came along to add a little excitement. Before first-person shooters, combat flight sims provided a uniquely thrilling experience of action-packed first-person skirmishes and gunplay.

Notable early combat flight sims include Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot (1984), subLOGIC's Jet (1985), and MicroProse's F-15 Strike Eagle (1985), all of which were severely hampered by technological limitations. The Falcon series got its start in 1984 with F-16 Fighting Falcon on the MSX, but didn't take off until Falcon was released for the Macintosh in 1987, with bitmapped graphics and the kind of detail and realism that is the series' hallmark. Amiga users were treated to an exclusive release in F/A-18 Interceptor (1988), which took the unusual setting of the San Francisco Bay Area and was widely regarded as the best flight sim on the Amiga.

While Falcon continued to step up the realism, Dynamix and Electronic Arts tried to keep combat flight sims accessible and fun for all players—releasing Red Baron (1990) and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (1991), respectively.

Red Baron dealt exclusively with World War I fighters, offering dogfighting and several other mission types, and, despite simplified physics, included simulation of gyroscopes, gun jams, and aircraft damage. Air Combat similarly sacrificed realism for more enjoyable gameplay, but preserved enough physics simulation to keep from feeling like an arcade game.

Dogfighting was Red Baron's specialty.

Electronic Arts competed directly with Falcon on the realism front in a series of games released under the label Jane's Combat Simulations, the first of which was called Advanced Tactical Fighters (1996). But it was Oleg Maddox, an aviation engineer, and his team at Maddox Games that developed the premier flight combat sim.

IL-2 Sturmovik, a World War II-themed sim named after a Soviet ground-attack fighter, was released in late 2001, after a protracted development cycle, and quickly made its mark on the gaming community. Maddox found that computing power necessitated compromise, but he still strove to provide the most detailed physics possible while still preserving good graphics and AI. The result was the most authentic flight sim on the market, at least until the first sequel, Forgotten Battles, arrived in 2003. Somehow, the developers created a sense of being on the edge of control, just barely keeping your plane airborne as it gets bullied by gravity, powerful air flows, and extreme torque.

A dedicated and highly knowledgeable community converged on the game, producing quality mods and helping the developers tune detail right down to engine performance at different altitudes and simulation of individual cylinders. (Novice players were not excluded from the fun, however, as realism could be turned down to make casual play possible.) IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, the sixth entry in the main series, was released earlier this year, further laying on the realism, complexity, and content that has become the series hallmark.

The IL-2 Sturmovik series shows no signs of letting up, once again impressing with the latest entry.

Rollercoaster Tycoon is by far my favorite. Anyone else jack up the price of umbrellas when it would rain?

ABSOLUTELY!!!

This was the one and only time I had to fight for screen time with the family computer growing up. My mom played Rollercoaster Tycoon for hours and hours, it was weird for me to have to try and kick her off.

Kinda sad how all the great games of yesteryear are not made anymore. Especially space sims, heck the only one I have seen in a while is the X series, which is more of a economic simulator than anything and doesn't really stand up to the likes of freespace in combat.

Before the cries of outrage hit, I must apologise for not talking about The Movies. It's a fantastic game simulating the running of a film studio, and was on my list of games to discuss. It should have had a couple of sentences, but it seems I forgot/didn't notice it was missing. Sorry, everyone.

No mention of the Janes line of sims? Probably the most realistic military flight sims, and all of which came with spiral bound manuals hundreds of pages long which were necessary for full realism mode.

I remember playing Theme Park a lot. Also DinoPark Tycoon; we had that on the computers in middle school, it was the first game I bought when my family finally got a PC. And of course TIE Fighter was a lot of fun as well.

No mention of the Janes line of sims? Probably the most realistic military flight sims, and all of which came with spiral bound manuals hundreds of pages long which were necessary for full realism mode.

There was the mention of ATF and AH-64D Longbow (which was released under the Jane's moniker).

Was a little disappointed that there was a mention of the bugfest that is Cliffs of Dover (which I have on my hard drive but I'm still waiting till bugs are quashed) but failed to mention the freaking awesomeDCS: A-10C Warthog....and keeping on the Jane's theme....Matt "Wags" Wagner is a producer for the DCS series who also worked on Jane's F/A-18 and Jane's F-15. The next plane for the DCS series has been rumored to be an F-18.

You forgot Tie Fighter! I know it's just a sequal to X-Wing, but it's probably still my favorite game of all time. I am not alone in considering it the greatest Star Wars game ever made. If only there were more missions with the Tie Defender, that thing was way cooler than the Missile Boat or the Tie Advanced's they made you play in the last few missions.

Wow. Lovely. I'm 42 and went through all of the flight sims. Did anyone else play warbirds? That was milestone to me for sure. Wing Commander was the ultimate though. Chris Roberts was the first video game superstar for that one. Anyway Cheers for a great look back on both parts.

The number of hours I've spent building railroads in OpenTTD, Railroad Tycoon, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Train Sim, Trainz - well - I was going to say wasted but no. Those games are damn fun. I think I'll pop in to OpenTTD for a while. In the mood to build me an electric interurban line.

1. I cant tell you how much time in my childhood I spent making boot disks and optimizing config.sys and autoexec.bat files to optimize my computer for more free conventional memory. Falcon 3.0 was the absolute worst game because it wanted 603kb of free conventional memory. I could never get it that high, I had to bring it back and get my money back. Even with everything loaded high and all unnecessary drivers unloaded (I think this had to do with running doublespace on my 486 - the dblspace driver took up a good chunk of memory).

2. Privateer and Privateer 2 didn't just make you want to have a joystick, it was an absolute necessity. You really couldn't play the game without one. I kinda want to go back and play those games again but I don't have a USB joystick (and I run a Mac now, so I don't know how well joysticks are supported in DosBox/Boxer). For a while I ran a website (hosted on GEOCITIES no less) for info on Privateer and Privateer 2. I would go around to the different planets in Priv 2, write down the costs of the goods, and eventually put them all into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I used the spreadsheet to calculate the best routes and would come up with chain-routes. Visiting three to five planets in a row, selling what you bought at the last planet and then buying something else to sell at your next stop (or two). Just kept going around and around until I had enough for the next upgrade for my ship.

3. Me and my friends spent an entire summer playing Football Pro 95 (the closest I've ever seen to a sports sim), MechWarrior 2 and listening to the Beatles White Album. Number 9, number 9, number 9....

4. Only slight on the article is no mention of AeroBiz or AeroBiz Supersonic. I mean, if they make a sequel to an "Airline Business Simulator" it had to have been slightly popular, right? I still have my working SNES at my vacation home and Aerobiz Supersonic is plugged into it right now.

Correction: The BBC Micro was available in many other countries besides the UK.

The earliest one mentioned that I played was Fighter Pilot on the Spectrum. It kinda sucked, but the companies next sim Tomahawk (the Apache chopper one) was really good considering the limitations of the Spectrums 48k memory and awful color mapping. It even had a realtime campaign going on around you with both sides gaining and losing territory.

One transport/business sim I didn't see mentioned was Ports of Call. Anyone else play that one?

As others have already pointed out: Janes F15E one was pretty good (if you had a Voodoo2 card) and Tie Fighter was great too.

Flight from Microsoft which hopefully will come out this year looks like it may be a worthy successor to Flight Simulator.

What I think would be an interesting article series would be to focus on sim games that have come from or have moved into the world of real-life, i.e. where they are used in training by those who the game simulates; for example ARMA and how various armed forces around the world use that as their actual military trainers or Flight Simulator, and how it found a home powering real flight simulators and war simulators, such as from Lockheed Martin.

While I'm disappointed with the lack of love for the rest of the X-wing follow-ons (TIE Fighter and XvT were just as good if not far superior to X-wing) but understand given the mid-late 90s density of the genre, how could we not mention Microsoft Space Simulator?

Descent: FreeSpace (Conflict: FreeSpace—The Great War in Europe) and its sequel, FreeSpace 2, are considered two of the best space sims ever created, as they more or less perfected the open-world space trading and combat gameplay pioneered by Elite

AFAIR FreeSpace is a campaign space-sim not open world and has no trading, or did I miss a part of the game, haven't played FreeSpace 2.

My A500 came bundled with F/A-18, and i learned the opening tune long before i found out that it was from the opening of top gun! That 3-layer code wheel is likely long gone tho. It and M1 tank platoon was often loaded.

I think it was Mechwarrior 2 that got me into PC gaming. But there was one mech game that was "odd": http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/metaltech-battledrome. Dymanix made, set in the Siege universe, but focused on duels for cash prices that would then be turned around for upgrades and repairs.

Hmm, i wonder if i should dig it back up and give it a dosbox spin.

And i could have sworn that i have seen a dos game that played very similar to Escape Velocity.

There was also 688 attack sub, Oil Empire, and i was not aware that Capitalism had gotten a followup (tho it seems a bit more cartoonish then the original). So much time of my youth spent on these games.

Oh, and before i forget, B-17 flying fortress. First Amiga game i mail ordered. And what a surprise when i opened up the box. Not only the game and a manual, but also a history book at least as thick as the game manual itself, covering the B-17 euro years in detail. And a Microprose sweater

Orbiter (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/) really deserved to be mentioned as the most accurate simulator of spaceflight (including some excellent simulation of real/fictional spacecrafts and their subsystems). And it looks awesome.

Correction: The BBC Micro was available in many other countries besides the UK.

Indeed. I was going to ask whether my 1990/1991 high school years (in Australia) were figments of my imagination, because I distinctly remember working on BBC Model B systems those years. (They were removed in 1992 in favour of IBM compatible PCs; the Acorn Archimedes lab went the same way in 1993.)

LHX Attack Chopper DeathTrack, while not exactly a sim in the "simulating real cars" type was a simHeavy Gear (1 & 2) for Mech Sims should also be mentioned :Pand you cant forget for space sims, Mantis XF5700, the first true space flight physics sim(still got the 3.5 inch floppies for it(all 12) and a computer to play it on :Poh, and Sentinel Worlds :P

Glad someone else remembers that universe. To this day I dream of getting enough capital to buy the Siege IP and reboot the series as a hardcore mech simulation. I'm talking TWO joysticks!

Heh, i just keep getting it mixed up with the Heavy Gear universe that Mindparadox mentioned.

Btw, i think i have one of the hex based strategy games set in the universe here somewhere. Hexes of various heights, cloned pilots (that could be trained, or learn in the field) and various other cool things. Crazy difficult tho...

Ah.... Escape Velocity... I can't begin to count the number of hours that perished due to that game. I bought a Mac for the sole purpose of playing that game, and I played the heck out of it. I'm still hoping for a game like it to be released with something that utilizes the power of today's PC's.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I was expecting to be torn apart by space and flight sim fans (and mech fans, too) -- I'm only a casual fan of those two sim genres; I've played many of the games, but I have finished only a few, and I know many fans would be more knowledgeable than me on the evolution of such games (even after the huge amount of research I did). So if I've left out something important, I apologise -- explain why it should be in there, and I'll make sure I don't miss it next time (if there is a next time).

Maybe I'll have to read back over it, but I'm sure I did at least mention the Jane's combat sims. They are indeed important, and it seems only the IL-2 Sturmovik games are better regarded as combat flight sims. (Correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm not afraid to be humbled.)

Microsoft Space Simulator missed out because it is even less of a game than Flight Simulator, but I'll concede that perhaps it should have been mentioned anyway.

bombcar wrote:

Svip wrote:

Forklift Simulator is the best sim. There is nothing more fun than shifting cargo around a warehouse.

I was going to respond with a joke about SimStapler, but it clearly lacks the incredible depth of that street sweeping simulator. I love how dramatic it seems with the music.

BGH122 wrote:

Really loving this series, hope you write another one. Maybe the evolution of shooters?

Thanks. I'm looking into some possibilities. It's been really interesting researching genre histories, so I hope I get the chance to do another one at some point. I definitely won't be choosing something as ridiculously broad as "sim games," though -- it was almost overwhelming trying to put all these diverse pieces together into one cohesive article of ~10,000 words (which was later split into two).